


Never Alone

by perrysghost



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: But he can’t, M/M, so neil has to try and figure out how to tell him, this is written from neils pov, todd doesn’t know that neil loved him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28538127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perrysghost/pseuds/perrysghost
Summary: Neil is gone. He spends his days having to stand by and watch as Todd’s heart is shattered into a million pieces. He has to watch the only person he has ever loved try to pick up the pieces one by one.He would give anything to make sure Todd knew that he was never alone.
Relationships: Todd Anderson/Neil Perry
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Never Alone

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to campitts nation ily all u crazy fuckers

If I could take it all back, I would. I’d do it in a heartbeat. 

It’s not easy having to stand by and watch the one person who you thought you’d grow old with breaking down before your eyes. It’s even harder to have to watch it happen every night. There’s no way for me to tell him that I’m okay now; no way to comfort him. 

It had been two weeks and I don’t think I’d seen him smile. Not once. Every night after dinner, Todd sat on his bed, facing mine, and sobbed. He sobbed for hours and hours until he didn’t have any more years left to cry. The love of my life was broken. And it was my fault. 

I thought it was the easy way out; to just stop existing, but I was wrong. When you stop existing, you only stop existing to yourself. I still exist to Todd and Charlie and Knox and the rest of the poets. They all still felt my pain and now I’m feeling theirs. 

By pulling that trigger all I had done was offload my pain onto the only people who loved me. I hadn’t made it better for me. I hadn’t made it better for everyone else. They still have to live life without me in it, acting like everything is okay. 

But it’s not. 

For the last few nights, Todd’s been wearing my jumper. The green one. My favourite one. He lies there, hugging his knees to his chest, talking out loud to me. He doesn’t know that I’m still here. He doesn’t know that I talk back to him. I sit on the floor, right in front of his face, trying to tell him that I’m still here with him; trying to tell him that he’ll never be alone. 

But it’s no use. He can’t see me. I’m dead, of course he can’t, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. 

Sometimes I think he sees me, or at least my shadow, because he looks right at me, his eyes start to water and he reaches out to me, my name a whisper on his lips. I don’t think he actually can see me, but it’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to being with him again. 

I’d give anything to go back to our picnics by the lake, to our midnight walks, to our secret dates in the cave, but most of all, I’d give anything to go back to Todd. 

My Todd. 

Being dead isn’t scary. It’s sad. It’s lonely, so very lonely. All I can do is watch the people I love living their lives without me. They’re still young, but eventually they’ll grow old and forget about me. Me, on the other hand, I will never grow old. I’ll be stuck like this forever; lonely, heartbroken and unable to do anything about it. 

It hurts to have to stand by and listen to Todd talking to me every night, but tonight was the worst. He laid in my bed and 

“Why, Neil, why did you have to leave me like this?” Todd’s broken voice dragged me from my thoughts, shattering the silence that had filled the room previously. “We were supposed to run away together to New York. You were going to be an actor; big and famous on broadway. I was supposed to be there, front row, on opening night. We were supposed to be happy together. Hell, Neil, we were supposed to grow old together. But now we never will. None of that will ever happen.”

Hearing Todd’s words broke my heart. He would never get to live the life we’d decided to live. He would never be able to see me on opening night, he would never grow old with me by his side. None of that would ever happen now. 

I so desperately wanted to be able to tell him that everything would work out just fine, but I couldn’t. I would never be able to talk to him again. He was broken. All I want to do is pick up the pieces of him and put them back together. I just wanted to be able to say goodbye. I just wanted to tell him how much I love him. Not loved, but love. It doesn’t matter that I’m gone now, nothing will ever stop me from loving him. 

I’d written everything down in a letter to Todd a few days before I died. I was going to tell him everything the night of the play, but I never got the chance. The letter in question was hidden inside a notebook that I’d hidden at the back of my drawer. Not the best place to keep a love letter, but I didn’t know where else he wouldn’t find it. This damn letter was the last chance I would ever get at being able to tell Todd how much he meant to me and I had no idea how he was going to find it, but I hoped and prayed that one day he would. 

______

Todd never did find the letter. I sat there every night begging for him to somehow find it, but that night never came. Eventually he stopped crying himself to sleep, he stopped talking to me as much (but he still did from time to time) and he began to start being Todd again. 

Years had passed and he seemed to have forgotten about me. Not completely though, I was still there in his mind, but he’d realised that I didn’t want him to cry every night or for him to lose sleep thinking about the life we could have had. He was successful now, a playwright living in New York City, so in a way he still did get to live out our dreams. 

I never left him, I was always with him to make sure he would never be alone. That’s what he hated the most; being alone. Before he joined Welton he’d been alone his whole life, but then he found the people who he could call his family. Ever since then, I’d promised myself that I would never leave him to be alone ever again and I stuck to that promise. Wherever Todd went, I went. 

It had reached the tenth anniversary of my death. A whole ten years since the day I pulled the trigger. A whole ten years since I lost my Todd. Despite ten years being quite a long time, it had felt like an eternity to me. 

Todd was sat curled up in his armchair, flicking through the photos he had of us all at Welton. I was sitting opposite him, although he couldn’t see me. We sat like that for hours in complete silence apart from a few occasional giggles when he found a photo of someone (usually Charlie) being stupid. I liked this. It was peaceful. It finally felt like Todd knew I was there with him. He wasn’t tense or upset like he had been the last nine years. I preferred it this way; Todd was celebrating the life we were able to live together rather than the life we never got the chance to live. 

Todd put the photos away in the little box he kept them in and pulled out a small book. I didn’t recognise it; he hadn’t brought it out in previous years. It was a complete mystery to me until he opened the first page and a folded piece of paper dropped into his lap. 

Then it hit me. 

It was my letter. 

All these years I thought Todd had never found the book or the letter, but he had. He’d had it all along and never opened it. I was scared, terrified even. If he opened that letter then he’d find out exactly how I felt about him. It didn’t matter that I was almost positive he felt the same way, I still had no idea how he was going to react. Would he be mad? Sad? Angry? 

As my mind was racing with questions, I didn’t even notice that Todd had opened the letter. I froze. This was it, there was no turning back now. 

His eyes scanned the page, taking in the words I had scrawled on the paper ten years ago. He sat there in silence as it hit him. I had been madly in love with him from the start. I truly did want to spend the rest of my life with him, I really did want to grow old with him. I really had meant everything I’d told him when I was still alive. 

Tears poured down his cheeks as he clutched the letter to his chest. “Oh, Neil.” His voice was thick. He was holding back sobs. “I love you too.”

I would have given anything to have been there in person, to be able to kiss him and tell him just how much he means to me, but no matter how hard I tried I knew that it would never happen. 

Todd was staring directly at me, as though he could see me. Or at least that’s what I was convincing myself was happening. This happened a lot, but this time it was different. It felt more real; like he could actually see me. 

I was hopeful. Maybe he’d be able to hear me this time. All I could do was smile at Todd’s tear stained face and tell him that “I always have loved you, Todd. And I’ll never stop.”

His face was the last thing I saw before everything faded into darkness. Todd had finally found what I had spent the last ten years trying to get him to see. My life had finally been completed. There was nothing else that I needed to do. Although I would never be able to see Todd again, I was content with that. He knew that I loved him and that’s all that mattered. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t there anymore. Now that Todd knew everything, I would always be with him no matter what. 

I was finally at peace. 

Todd was finally at peace. 

My Todd.

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve never written anything like this before, but i really liked how it turned out and i hope you did too :)) 
> 
> twitter @idlyella


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